A Political Party Can Arise Only From A Movement

What does the discriminating voter look for in a political party these days, where it comes to candidates for central government offices?

.

The Greens are a commonly touted alleged alternative, but if by some miracle their candidate were elected, what do you think she would do?

.

As with Bernie Sanders, the Greens’ website is no help, expressing lots of pleasant-sounding boilerplate but nothing clear. (Along with several instances of pandering to mainstream corporate lies.) While it’s true that real dissidents shouldn’t let themselves be drawn into providing too many specifics of what they want to do since it’s in the nature of radical change that you have to improvise most of the details, you do need to be stark and unequivocal about what the end results will be. “As president I’ll tear up the TPP, NAFTA, and every globalization pact in between” is the word of a real anti-system candidate. A vaguely expressed opinion that the TPP might not be such a good idea doesn’t cut it. (That’s also all I found at the Sanders website when I looked earlier this year.)

.

(I’m aware that the vast majority of Stein supporters are supporters only out of a vague tribal feeling and that in spending ten minutes at the website I’ve already done far more than the vast majority of her voters will ever do. I used to be astonished at how rare it was to find a supporter of Obama or anyone you care to name who had even the slightest idea what their Leader actually does or has done or specifically promises to do. Elizabeth Warren is a perfect example, a pure projection fantasy. We’ve seen that across the board this year with Sanders, the Greens, and of course Clinton.)

.

In Stein’s case, for example where it comes to the pesticide/GMO complex she seems vague and tentative, doesn’t know much about it, ergo doesn’t consider it very important. She thinks there may be some problems and that America needs “mandatory labeling” and more study. Needless to say the “anti-GMO” crowd considers her a real anti-poison leader. (Of course in 2008 Obama also promised labeling, one of the few things he actually lied about.)

.

Does that sound like the kind of revolutionary who would appoint an anti-corporate attack dog as Agriculture Secretary, who would eviscerate Big Ag subsidies, impose a halt on GMO registrations and field trials, fire all the Big Ag propagandists and lackeys? And when as a result of this a thousand lawsuits are filed, would her administration actually stand on the law, and when this doesn’t work in the corrupt courts, stonewall and obstruct and smash up the machinery and defy? And would she appoint another attack dog at the FDA who would suspend its prior approvals and illegal GRAS designations and begin enforcing existing law (for all these things you don’t even need anything new to take action within the bounds of legality, you just need actually to apply the existing law; the same is true in many, many other contexts) on regulating GE products and suffused pesticides as the food additives they are, which would immediately halt all sales of any product containing any such additive?

.

Because for those who haven’t gotten the news, that’s what’s necessary. It’s necessary in every sector: I just gave one example, but we can apply the same across all executive bureaucracies. (Of course I’m sticking with things the executive can do unilaterally, without having to “work with Congress”. But does anyone seriously think Jill Stein would have any other attitude than great angst over “how am I going to work with Congress??”, however impossible that would be if she really wanted to accomplish any part of a radical program? A progressive of course assumes you have to, no matter how impossible. And therefore, even assuming Stein is sincere in the first place, the caving in and selling out would begin right from the transition period. We saw what happened with the Greens in Germany once their establishment was given a share of power.)

.

Do we see any alleged alternative party which would do this? Or do we see only a party wanting a Democrat do-over, but honest and for true this time? In other words, the exact same scam just starting over with a new name.

.

.

My conclusion is that electoralism is a fundamentalist cult whose devotees worship elections and the vote as such. They care zero for results. Results, for them, have nothing to do with reality, only with fantasy.

.

But America needs a movement which exists only of reality, by reality, and for reality. Only such a movement could ever possibly be of the people, by the people, and for the people. And only a political party which sprouts from such a movement can live up to such an aspiration and attain such a goal. I didn’t write this piece just to rag on Green supporters, but to insist on the fact that there is no way forward under conventional electoralism. By now belief in electoralism is a disease. It’s a delusion to believe in the efficacy of anything but building a new extra-legal movement starting completely outside the system. It’s hard work, with much blood, toil, tears, and sweat, and little in the way of instant gratification. But it has to be done.

.

As for a political party of true protest, opposition, and regime change, such a party can never be cobbled together on the fly, or out of the hurt feelings and earnest sentiments of idealists, or built on an individual’s ego trip. It can grow only out of the soil of the true spiritual, cultural, political movement. But as any grower worthy of the name can tell you, building soil takes work and time.

.

I write this so people who aren’t full-blown cult members might begin to comprehend ideas that seem to be literally inconceivable for most Americans so far.

.

.

Advertisements

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

2 Comments

[…] legalized through corporate welfare, radical changes in patent law, changes in regulatory law and disregard of existing law by regulators. They could easily be abolished simply by removing the Rube Goldberg legalization structure they […]

[…] on the evident failure of status quo liberalism? Any Bernistas out there who can explain? . And forget the Green Party. Their vapid “issues” page gives zero details on what it means for Jill Stein to […]